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Meet The Cosmo Mom, Sarah Preston Gorenstein

Hello, parenting.com readers! I’m so thrilled to be here blogging for you every Monday. As a full-time working mom, I face many of the same challenges SAHMs moms face, with the added pressure of balancing a deadline-ridden work day at a major men’s magazine/website. By day, I’m the managing editor of Playboy.com—by night, I’m a new-ish wife to Jay and mom to Preston, our five-month-old son, and our dog Barkley, an English goldendoodle. After taking a few months off when Preston was born, I returned to the strange insanity that is my job, and have been juggling things better than even I expected. Well…some days. I can’t lie: There are plenty of mornings I’m not convinced I can handle two full-time jobs, and wonder whether it’s really possible to have it all -- healthy marriage, major career AND multiple kids. What do you think? I can’t wait to explore this more with you, and hear from other moms out there who have the same (or similar) struggles as I do. (And if you are out there, please comment!)

But first, a little about me:

By the time Preston was born on August 29, 2009, Jay and I had not even been married a full year yet (we celebrated our one-year anniversary on Sept. 21). Here’s the rough timeline of events: We dated for 8 months; were engaged for 6 months; got pregnant 3 months after tying the knot; moved into our new condo the same week Jay started a new business (and coincidentally the same night we conceived Preston); got our puppy during my first trimester; got a promotion during my second trimester; I worked 50/60-hour weeks throughout most of my third trimester; we had Preston at the end of August, and then Mom and Dad took a 12-week maternity leave. As in, both of us were home every day together for three months—that’s the good thing about being married to a man that’s self-employed.

So let’s put it this way: Balancing a full-time job and a freelance writing career with being a mom is considered a slow month in my house.

But this is where it gets interesting: Until I got pregnant, I spent more than a decade as a professional party girl. I was the nightlife columnist for Chicago magazine, and I also spent years covering the celebrity beat for media outlets like People magazine. And, yes, I’ve also been to my share of Playboy Mansion parties (more on those in another post). But it was in 2006, about a year-and-a-half before I started dating my husband, that I began blogging for Chicago magazine, under the moniker “Last Girl Standing” — I chronicled my dating life as a 30-something single girl who was having too much fun in her life to even consider settling down. Then guess what happened? I met Jay and settled down.

It’s not just a balance of time that poses the biggest challenges in my life now -- though that is a big one -- it’s a balance of lives. With one foot climbing the ladder in my demanding career, and another firmly rooted in my family life, I often struggle with an identity crisis. Am I a working mom, or a mom who works? I also struggle with the fact that Jay is a part-time SAHD -- to be honest, I’m jealous of the way he’s able to balance his life and work. It doesn’t make it any easier that I’m not just a woman working in a man’s world; I’m a mom working for a male-oriented company. As you might’ve guessed, there isn’t a lot of dirty diaper talk around our office water cooler -- and it’s this dual life that I’ll be exploring here. Tune in every Monday, and don’t be shy: I want to hear from each one of you!